This I Believe

I believe that family is everything. My family has always been very close with one another especially when my mom was going through her complicated pregnancy with my two brothers and my sister. I was five years old when my mom became pregnant with the triplets. My family was very excited to be expecting the new additions to the family. But what my family didn’t know was how it was going to be a lot of struggles to keep these new additions.

My mom was twenty weeks pregnant when she was put in the hospital due to a uterine infection and she had to stay there for the next seven weeks. My dad still had to work so I was usually left with my grandfather or one of my other relatives. It was during this time that we were told that the two boys may be conjoined. At twenty-seven weeks my mom had a C-section and thankfully the boys were not conjoined but the hard journey was not over yet. The babies were very premature, had many health problems and only weighed between two pounds fives ounces and two pounds ten ounces. My mom was put in intensive care for two weeks and the babies were put into intensive care for three months. Sadly the day after the birth Robert the biggest of the babies passed away due to all of the health conditions. While the other babies were still in the hospital we had Robert’s funeral. It was very hard for my family to loose someone they had already cared for so much. At three months Victoria was brought home followed by Tommy the next month. They both were hooked up to all types of monitors to make sure they kept breathing and their hearts kept beating. My family became even closer during this time because it was a lot of work taking care of the babies. Finally after a hard year the babies were taken off the monitors and were able to function on their own.

The twins are now happy and healthy twelve year olds. They show no sign of their rough first year; other then them needing a little extra help in school. I believe that if it weren’t for my family being so close with one another helping each other through everything and never giving up that allowed us to get though that time. In the end it has only made my family that much closer and stronger.

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Top 100 Essays USB Drive

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.